What's the oldest piece of machinery that you own that still works, for its original purpose, in (mostly!) its original state?

[nanoraptor@bitbang.social]

What's the oldest piece of machinery that you own that still works, for its original purpose, in (mostly!) its original state?

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@NanoRaptor My tenement flat. It was built some time in the 1820s, so it's been up and running and inhabited for a couple of centuries now. (Per Le Corbusier, "a house is a machine for living in".)

I have some books that are a bit older, though.

[nanoraptor@bitbang.social]

@cstross 1860 is about as far as I can go with my living-in-machine. 1820 would pre-date my *city* (but that’s much of australia for you)

[jwz@mastodon.social]

@NanoRaptor @cstross Enter the shimmering arc! https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/contrafactuals/

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@jwz @NanoRaptor Entirely true, but also: have you noticed when someone tells you they remember their previous incarnation they always mean someone like Julius Caesar or Cleopatra—not some poor nameless grunt worked to death in a latifunda, or harvesting rice in bronze-age China?

We remember the highlights. But the pervasive homophobia of the 1980s, the ghastly death toll from AIDS extending into the 1990s, PTSD from fear of nuclear war—these all get filtered out by the rosy glow of nostalgia.